Day 2 in Barcelona: the Day of Gaudi

We started Thursday bright and early by heading out to the Sagrada Familia – Gaudi’s STILL unfinished church. Gaudi was a very religious man who wanted to build a church that evoked the feeling that you were in a forest streaming with light. Mind you, this project started in the late 1800s and Gaudi only saw about 1/8 (that’s my estimation anyway) of it finished by the time he died in 1926. Today, you can walk around the inside which Gaudi would be proud to see does in fact look like a forest. Due to its decades of construction, it does tend to look different from each side – front, back, inside and outside. Gaudi wanted this church to have streams of light and I must say, he succeeded! Many of the other churches that we saw later in our trip were very dark and cavernous, but not Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia!

Next, we moved onto Park Guell to check out the view and Gaudi’s home before he died. Needless to say, this was our first experience lost in Barcelona (please note that I said the first… definitely not the last!). Eventually, we weaved our way up the hill and found and entrance to the park. The park is a mix of evergreen and palm trees, with bits of Gaudi mixed in.

After the park, we headed to the History of the City Museum. Located in the Barrio Gotico, the museum rests upon the former city of Barcino circa 15 BC. The museum weaves you underground and explains the layout of the old city, specifically focusing on the laundry, wine making and church sections of the old city. After the museum, we had our first glass of sangria at a local tapas bar.

We decided to head back to Barrio Gotico for dinner and proceeded to get lost for the second time on our trip. Well, we weren’t exactly lost… we just couldn’t find the restaurant based on the map from Tia’s Fodor’s travel book.

Unable to let it go that we could not find the Café de l’Academie, we searched the internet and other travel guides to see where we erred. I’m happy to write that we are not stupid – the Fodor’s map sucked! After meandering around the Barrio Gothic for at least 30 minutes, we gave into our hunger and went to the other only place that we had found during our exhaustive search – a restaurant called Pla. While this was not the cheapest meal we ate, it was definitely one of the best. I had a fantastic plate of pork with some kind of amazing sauce that made up for all of the walking that we had done before dinner.